That reader isn't alone. Red Dead Redemption, the hottest new video game of the week appears to be plagued by a bug or bugs that are turning very important elements of the game invisible.

Kotaku has reached out to Rockstar Games about these invisibility glitch reports and will update this post if we hear anything about any possible fixes.

We're seeing accounts from last night that mention "minor issues such as weapons and hats disappearing ... [and]lost connections at an alarming rate" as well as a GameFAQs thread containing accounts of more than a dozen invisibility glitches in an hour as well as attacks by invisible cougars.

Players are reporting these glitches on both Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 copies of Red Dead Redemption, primarily when the game's multiplayer mode is activated. Some of them have isolated the problem to specific locations in the game's map. Stepping into those zones makes the player or horse flick away, going invisible, but still being controllable by the player. Imagine the problems in a multiplayer match, one gamers told us, when a player starts sniping others while he is in an invisibility zone and they are not.

One RDR player told Kotaku directly that he's seen four versions of the invisibility bug: one that makes the player's own character or horse invisible, one that makes the horse and guns disappear, one that just vanishes the guns and one that makes every players' horse and character disappear during a multiplayer session.

Red Dead development studio Rockstar Games already issued an Xbox 360 patch yesterday, on the day of the game's release, to address problems with system-link multiplayer.

Rockstar's new Western has received high praise from reviewers and strong buzz this week. Hopefully this bug is not widespread and will be fixed swiftly.

Update: The company told Kotaku that it looks forward to fix these problems quickly and notes to all Red Dead Gamers: "if you're having issues please email [email protected] We are also actively on the forums helping people with any questions they may have about the game. Thank you all for your support and we look forward to getting a fix out as quickly as soon as we can."

Comments

Attack by invisible cougars? Egads! The horror! Such a species could quickly become the dominant race on this world.

In seriousness, will be picking this up on friday, don't consider these glitches to be a big problem. I'm sure rockstar will fix them and I can just play single player until then. Not sure if this game will actually be all its cracked up to be though, I would have liked some more split-screen action and I'm hoping that there is enough out in the world to find and do.

Try thinking of it like so: Rockstar will spend the next 24 hours furiously correcting the bugs, in time for the international release date (tomorrow). So really, we won't have to worry about these issues.

Good to see Rockstar are looking to patch it, from what I've from American friends there's quite a few issues with the invisibility bug just one among many. Freezing/crashes are not uncommon, apparently. Without looking to start any console wars, the PS3 also looks to suffer a bit worse than the 360 version but I guess we'll have to wait for a proper Lens of Truth analysis to hear the... truth :x... regarding this rather than hearsay and subjective perception tipping in favour of preferred platforms.

Well it might be annoying during a match if just a couple of people are invisible and have an advantage as a result but a match with everyone invisible could provide some laughs....at least for a while but still doesn't diminish my anticipation fort he game it looks sweet

You would think that the testers would have noticed something like this and had it fixed before release. Makes you wonder if they even bothered testing the multiplayer part of the game at all, either that or they just wanted to rush it out as quick as possible to make some quick money and then worry about patching it later.

I'm having an invisibility glitch with my horse at the start of the game. When u first get off the train, Ur supposed to follow some guy named Jake to the horses. I walk over there and he hops onto an invisible horse standing next to Ur invisible horse. U can still see the reins on the horses though. U can hop onto ur invisible horse too but u can't make it go anywhere. Anyone know how to fix this?

Triple AAA games nailing the brief. Indie games surprising people out of nowhere, and expansions and patches that completely turn a game around. It's been a good year for games - now it's time for you to vote for your favourite.